Dogs are people too! Neuroeconomics professor Gregory Berns conducted MRI on his dog Callie, and on other volunteer dogs, and found out that canines have the emotional capacity of the human child.
"The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child. And this ability suggests a rethinking of how we treat dogs," Berns wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times.
During the ethical and carefully done study, Dogs were trained to go into an MRI simulator built in Bern's living room. It was discovered that the level of activity in the dog's caudate - a part of the brain sitting between the brainstem and the cortex - increases when the dog smells food or scent of a familiar human.
The same thing happens to humans when we think of food, love, and money.
Another study revealed that dogs, like humans, are capable of jealousy. Dogs are a man's best friend, and canines want to keep it that way, reported Reuters. In an experiment, dogs pushed or touched their owners when the humans played with a plush animatronic dog. A quarter of the 36 small dogs even snapped at the toy.
The results of the experiments are unsurprising, given that dogs have spent so much time with humans throughout their evolution.
However, Western Carolina University professor Hal Herzog disagreed with the studies. Herzog believes that dogs have more wolf-like rather than human-like qualities.
He says that while Americans have enjoyed the company of their furry friends and have grown comfortable with keeping them as members of their families, people in other cultures have kept dogs as hunting companions and canines seem to enjoy the treatment.
Herzog referred to a study, published in the 2011 journal "Anthrozoos," which obeserved 60 cultures around the world. The reseach noted that many cultures keep dogs around for hunting, cleaning garbage and chasing wild creatures. Some people even eat dogs as part of their tradition.
"They didn't have a sense that dogs are our companions," he said.
Seventy percent of the global dog population is free-range, mostly living in packs around garbage dumps or roaming around small villages where they clean up scraps. This, Herzog believes, is ideal for dogs, because it closely mimics what a dog is supposed to do.
"If you had to be a dog, you'd probably rather be near a garbage dump in Mexico City than a Manhattan penthouse," the scientist says. "Semiwild dogs have better lives than those that live in homes with their reproductive organs cut. I'd rather be a real dog than a pet."
Herzog specifically discourages owners to involve their dogs in vain human diets. He told a story of a vegan who did not feed her cat meat. "That's not healthy for cats. They're carnivores," He said. "I don't think dogs are people, and treating them as such isn't good for them."
Hezog is also not in favor of intensive pet care - especially if the owners can barely afford it. A non-wealthy friend of his took out a $12,000 loan to pay for cancer treatments for her dog, who ended up dying a couple of years after the treatment. "If you have money and it makes you happy, I have no problem with that, but when you aren't wealthy or you have kids, spending that kind of money is silly," he said.
